Vibe: Ok, someone got murdered but let's not get too serious about it? how hard can solving crimes even be?

Vibe: Kate Winslet in Mare of Easttown. Misanthrope with a cause, solving crimes, f@cking shit up but not in a cool way, just in a "wow you need therapy" way.

Vibe: "Do You Think That There Is A Corner Of This Earth That You Could Travel To Far Away Enough To Free Me From This Torment?”

Vibe: MUMS. Motherland energy. But also like, having a mum, being a mum, we can relate.

Vibe: Evil gays??? (but make it sexy)

Vibe: 90s nostalgia but, like, dark. Bootleg jeans. Buffy but without the vampires. Yellowjackets?? I wasn't a teenager in the 90s but I wish I'd been a teenager in the 90s.

Vibe: This Is Us episode where they do family therapy. Huge family saga, lots of drama, but emotionally intelligent and everyone loves each other. I cry the whole time.

Vibe: Cell Block Tango, but like a book?

Vibe: I'm on holiday, I'm on a sun lounger by the pool, I have a cocktail, later I will go to a fancy dinner, I want a book to read that is just holiday joy.

Going through my submissions for the first time since my wedding and really ITCHING to sign some new novelists. So I thought it was time for a new #mswl. This time it's not genres, just ✨vibes✨

“Send me your commercial/upmarket romcoms with exes who cohabitate/co-parent--but where it’s not the exes who get together.” @readbystephanie #MSWL psliterary.com/submissions/

And more! Send me your lyrical, off-kilter, boundary-exploring books.

As a note, @HowlandLit is now fully moving to QueryManager, and you can find my link on our website!

Bonus round for favorites: Patti Smith, Girls Can Kiss Now, Lot: Stories, Heavy, Swamplandia!, Sadness is a White Bird, Kevin Wilson’s “A Room at Madame Terreur’s,” Pam Houston, Binchtopia podcast, Troop Zero, Empire Records, 1970s rock, Jacqueline Woodson, Ali Smith.

In nonfiction, I’d love to see writing about the relationships between people and their places, and CNF that blends research with personal narratives. I especially love pop culture, music, internet culture (women on the internet!), essay collections, etc.

More in fiction: joyous LGBTQ+ characters. Contemporary, literary takes on the Western that critique genre tropes. Speculative/magical realism elements that are grounded in the “real” world (think Nothing To See Here, The Pisces)

I’d love to see subversive, sexual, queer women gone rogue (Melissa-Broder-type characters who are shamelessly off-putting, and have not only rejected gender roles, but all social expectations entirely)—Think: Sedating Elaine, The Pisces, Otessa Moshfegh

In fiction, I’m craving characters that are *so* possesed by their wants that their behavior takes a drastic turn—and alternately, melancholic characters who know that they can’t have what they want (and want it anyway).

On the religious/spiritual side, I’m looking for well-researched subversions of what we expect about religion, and deep dives into how people live their religions, into death practices, what it means to "believe," and how religious backgrounds affect character decisions.

Other topics! Send me writing about: material culture—our objects, histories of *things*, consumer culture, religious relics, and so on. Para-social relationships: celebrity obsession, internet culture, codependency.

Across the board, I’d love to see: region-specific writing (southern writers on the coastal and “convenience store” south, the Western US, or international narratives), especially underrepresented voices from these regions—